Authors: Jude Fisher
Some of the women began to cry. Bera turned on them angrily.
‘Tears will not keep these raiders at bay!’ she cried, fixing Fat Breta and Marin Edelsen with an unforgiving look. ‘Dry your eyes and prepare to temper your blades with Istrian blood if you wish to save your lives and your virtue. I cannot promise you that we shall prevail, but we shall not shame our menfolk by giving ourselves up like calves to the slaughter.’
Sniffing, the women regarded their spears and knives dubiously. Then they gripped the handles harder and turned their faces to the windows with new determination.
‘Let them come,’ said Hesta Rolfsen resolutely, shaking her elm-spear at the raiders. ‘And if we die, we die bravely.’
Behind them, one of the roof-climbers pitched foot-first onto the floor. Fat Breta charged him with her spear. The point glanced off his mail coat with a screech and she tripped over the shaft and landed in a tumble at his feet. The raider, a lithe young man with almond-shaped eyes and a winning smile, extended a courteous hand to her and Fat Breta, who had never had any man smile at her, and certainly none as pretty as this one, took it without a murmur. The second man dropped through the roof at this moment and grinned at the first. ‘Hens in a coop,’ Milo Forin said to his brother in the impenetrable dialect of the north coast, squeezing Fat Breta’s hand reassuringly. ‘And well fed ones at that!’
Marin Edelsen plunged a dagger into his side and he fell over, looking surprised. She watched him collapse, looking even more surprised than he was and the reddened blade fell from her fingers. With a growl, Nuno Forin sprang at her and caught her by the throat. He looked wildly around at the shocked women, then back at his brother, who had staggered to his feet. The wound had not been deep, though the blood was still seeping.
A spear whirred through the air and took Milo Forin in the chest with such force that he was pinned to one of the roof supports. He expired there without a word. Gramma Rolfsen rubbed her hands down her apron. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it seems I haven’t lost my throwing arm.’
Nuno Forin held Marin in front of him to protect himself from a similar onslaught. What had appeared a relatively simple task had taken a desperate turn. With his free hand he drew his sword. ‘Door!’ he said in the Old Tongue. It was one of the few words he knew.
No one moved.
‘Door!’ he said again, and waved the sword around.
‘Leave the door alone,’ Bera said coolly.
Marin began to wail. The raider tightened his grip on her throat and she stopped. He dragged her towards the barred door, watching the women as he went, his handsome face suddenly ferocious. When he came level with Kitten Soronsen, he paused, his attention captured by the bright crimson of the silk tunic. His black eyes looked her up and down assessingly. Then drove his knife into Marin Edelsen’s throat and shoved her body aside, so that it cannoned into one of the old Seal Rock women, providing sufficient distraction for him to take Kitten hostage instead. His free hand travelled up and down the crimson silk, closing for an appreciative moment on her buttock. She stood stock-still, shocked by the sudden death of her friend, her fingers opening and closing around the shaft of the spear she held; then it fell with a clatter from her grasp. Nuno Forin pulled the pretty blue ribbons with their tiny silk flowers from her hair and, twisting viciously, wrapped her long braids around his fist and pressed the point of his sword to her throat. A thin welling of blood spilled down over the blade and dripped onto the shift and the floor. Thin Hildi gasped as Kitten’s knees began to buckle.
‘Door!’ he demanded again, holding the fainting girl upright. He made a mime of sawing off Kitten’s head if they did not comply.
Two of the women closest to the door started removing the benches which formed the barricade. ‘Don’t!’ shouted Bera.
‘We can’t just stand by and see her killed.’
‘Then watch from the window as they rape her before your eyes and then kill her anyway!’ Bera returned angrily, but the women continued in their endeavour until the door came free and Nuno Forin pushed his way outside. As he passed, Otter Garsen tried to pull Kitten from his grasp, but he swung his sword around in a tight circle and she cried out. Three of her fingers dropped to the ground, twitching, and she fell down in shock.
Outside, the raiders cheered and whooped as Nuno Forin made it back to them, pushing Kitten Soronsen in front of him.
‘How many are in there?’ Bastido demanded.
‘Maybe twenty. All women,’ Nuno replied. He grinned around at his companions. ‘No one touches this pretty bird but me. You can have the stringy old hens and the overstuffed turkeys.’
‘What about the shipmaker?’ the Bastard persisted.
Nuno shrugged, ‘He stands shaking by the window like a palsied rabbit, his eyes fair popping out with fear.’
‘Perhaps he is more frightened of the women of Rockfall than he is of us,’ Clermano quipped. ‘I have heard they have teeth between their legs instead of hair!’
Now Bastido and his men sent a shower of spears and arrows down on the steading, aiming for the holes the men had made in its roof, but they knew they were doing little damage with them when the women sent them back again, hurling them out of the windows or shooting the arrows from the gables. Night fell and the raiders began to complain of being cold and hungry and bored with their slow progress.
Galo Bastido knew what they meant by this. He had two more stratagems left to him. One might involve significant loss of life; the other was hardly less pleasant. First he had his men gather tinder and light a fire. Then he took Baranguet aside and made his thoughts known. His lieutenant grinned, then approached the giant, Casto Agen. ‘Hang onto Nuno Forin,’ Baranguet said softly. ‘And do not let him free until I tell you.’
The bare-knuckle fighter stayed where he was, frowning, and the firelight played over his wide features as on a wall. It took him a little while to assimilate information; half a minute later he grabbed the north-coaster in a headlock until Nuno’s face went bright red and he started to wheeze.
Galo Bastido pulled Kitten Soronsen to her feet, his eyes on the steading, the interior of which was now lit with a reddish glow which silhouetted the heads peering out of the windows. Then he shouted into the gloom, ‘We are bored and cold and need some exercise to warm ourselves up. Let the shipmaker out now or we shall treat you to a very special entertainment of our own devising!’ He pushed the girl towards his waiting men. ‘Strip her!’ he commanded.
At once, a group of raiders surrounded Kitten, each of them grinning maniacally. Given such licence, their hands were suddenly everywhere at once. The girl shrieked as they pushed her from one to another, each one tearing away a strip of cloth before passing her on until she stood before them, naked and terrified. Bruises the size and shape of hands stood out on her pale skin; gashes and gouges made by fingernails leaked crimson blood.
‘By the lord,’ Bera said through gritted teeth, ‘they are devils.’ She put down the fine sword Katla had made and took up a hunting bow, nocked an arrow and sighted down the shaft. The loosed barb took a short dark man in the upper arm so that he howled like a dog. Three more arrows followed the first. One of the sea-wardens fell to his knees with a shaft in his gut; the other two fell harmlessly short.
The big man holding Nuno Forin let him go. Two of the raiders pushed Kitten Soronsen to the ground and held her down and the north-coaster began to fumble with his clothing.
Otter Garsen shook her bandaged hand out of the window. ‘Your pricks will swell up and turn black if you touch her!’ she yelled in the Old Tongue. ‘This I swear by the Troll of Fairwater! Your balls will shrivel up and fall off and your guts will twist in agony!’ She paused to draw breath, then bellowed: ‘Your kidneys will boil and your ribcage will burst open and propel your heart out of your chest and you will die in the most excruciating pain!’
Bera raised an eyebrow. It was not so much the content of the curse which surprised her, but the older woman’s knowledge of the common language, some of it quite technical.
She watched the men look from one to the other. Then Nuno Forin dropped his breeches and fell to his knees in front of Kitten Soronsen. For a moment, they thought he had done so in order to engage in the rape; then they saw the goose-fletching sticking out of his back. Before anyone out there could react, another man fell dead. A fleet figure scooted past the men like a wraith and disappeared into the darkness.
‘Katla!’ Bera breathed. ‘That was Katla!’ She turned to the women. ‘We shall not give in!’ she announced. ‘Take up anything you can throw or shoot. Let us show them what Rockfallers can do!’
Within moments, a hail of missiles engulfed the raiders. First it was sticks and staves and cooking implements; then it was all manner of bizarre objects.
Gramma Rolfsen grinned gleefully down at Fat Breta and Forna Stensen who were propping her up in a precarious fashion through the hole in the roof. ‘Hold me steady, girls,’ she demanded and took aim with Fent’s old catapult once more. A large ball of cow-dung enclosing a damaging collection of sheep’s knuckles and pebbles struck the knife-fighter, Clermano, squarely on the jaw, knocking him flat, if more with surprise than force. She followed this up with a bag full of rivets and some fire-blackened stones from the bread-oven.
The raiders abandoned the pale form of Kitten Soronsen and took shelter behind the wall.
‘This is ignominious!’ cried Baranguet. ‘Let us storm the hall at once!’
‘No,’ replied his captain. ‘We must resort to my last stratagem.’
He sent some men down to the wood to collect sticks and twigs and others to the outbuildings to fetch whatever dry straw or hay they might find there. These they fashioned into tied bundles. Two of the Forent men ran with armfuls of the tinder to the right of the steading while the remaining two sea-wardens, Breseno and Falco, piled their faggots on the left side. These they set fire to. The women inside ran about gathering buckets of water and casting them out of the windows to quench the flames, and when the water ran out, they threw out whey and stew, which were somewhat less effective. Before too long, fire had caught hold of the structural pillars. Then the raiders shot flaming arrows into the dry turf of the roof. Soon, the hall was full of smoke.
‘My god, Bera, we cannot withstand this,’ Otter wheezed. ‘Send out the shipmaker, for Feya’s sake.’
Through the dense and choking air, Bera Rolfsen stared at her old friend, taking in the bloodstained bandage around her ruined hand, the misery etched on her face, her streaming eyes. Then she turned to Morten Danson. ‘Go,’ she said simply.
The shipwright stared back at her. He looked angry, but instead of uttering any word of recrimination he made his way to the door and unbarred it. Opening it just a slit he sucked in a mouthful of clear air and shouted into the night, ‘This is Morten Danson, shipmaker to the King of Eyra. I am coming out: stay your hands if you wish to take me to your lord alive!’
Then he stepped outside. After several moments’ silence, Bera heard the sounds of celebration in the raiders’ camp. She peered around the hall. It was hard to see through the smoke now, for it was as if thick blue curtains hung in the air. She could make out faces only where lanterns had been lit: in the blurry haze she marked how soot ran from Kit Farsen’s nose in two long grimy streaks, how Thin Hildi had, with remarkable practicality, bound a damp scarf across her nose and mouth; how the older of the Seal Rock women was clutching her chest as if it hurt. Her mother, Hesta, looked defiant, even though her eyes were red-rimmed and seeping and she had had to prop herself against a pillar; while Forna Stensen, three times and more her junior, looked as if she might expire at any moment. At the back of the hall, someone was wheezing like an afflicted donkey. That would be Fat Breta, Bera thought with a moment’s irritation. There really was no choice here. Fire had caught hold of the central pillar now, and flames leapt from the edges of the roof where the turf was driest. If they remained inside, they would die like bugs in a burning tree; if they went outside and gave themselves into the hands of the enemy—
It was unimaginable; but it was life.
‘Hark to me!’ Bera croaked at last, her voice competing with the crackling flames. ‘There is no more to be done to save ourselves, for if we stay here the fire will take us; and if we leave, the raiders will take us. You must each make your choice according to your will.’ She coughed and took a while to collect herself. Then she finished with: ‘It is a poor choice, and for that I am sorry. I had not thought it would come to this.’
There were tears in the Mistress of Rockfall’s eyes now, Otter Garsen noted, and she doubted they were merely a result of the smoke.
Nevertheless, she held herself straight and proud as the women began to shuffle towards the door, slowly at first, then, when the clear air of the outside began to pour in, with swifter, more purposeful steps, until they were able to peer out into the darkness where, in the middle distance, in the lee of the enclosure wall, the southern raiders lounged in the grass, basking in the heat of their own fire and supping noisily from casks of wine. They called encouragement to the women, but since most of them spoke only Istrian, no one really understood what they said, which was probably as well.
‘No!’
The voice was disembodied, invisible; hard to locate, for it seemed (impossibly) to come from the sky. The women looked around wildly, half in and half out of the doorway. Tian Jensen looked up onto the roof and gasped.
‘There is a gast up there: it is hag-riding the roof timbers!’
And indeed when they all stared upwards it did seem that an afterwalker had taken up residence on the roof-tree, for a dark figure with wild and spiky hair was sitting astride the central beam, its legs dangling on either side of the wood, and with huge hands it flung flaming divots of turf down all around them.
‘It must be Magla, come back from death, vengeful because we did not save her!’ cried Kit Farsen.